Terms used in reader development

Any new practice invents its own terms. Here are the origins and meanings of key terms in reader development.

And some from related areas:

Creative reading

First used by Chris Meade and Rachel Van Riel while working as Community Arts Co-ordinators for Sheffield Libraries in the 1980s. Creative reading was consciously chosen to parallel creative writing, claiming an equivalence of creativity for the act of reading.

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Information and Imagination Services

First used by Chris Meade in 1992 while Arts Development Officer at Birmingham Libraries, where it became widely adopted as a strapline for the library service. Deliberately paralleled and challenged the traditional description Reference and Information Services.

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The new aesthetic of reading

First used by Rachel Van Riel in 1996 at a presentation to regional arts board staff with different art specialisms at Yorkshire Arts. Rachel argued that reader development offered a new model of creative participation in the arts which could be adapted into other artform areas such as music or visual arts or theatre.

What is the equivalent of the reading group for music listeners or theatregoers? They can join a music appreciation class or they can attend special events at the theatre where professionals reveal the processes behind a specific production. Both of these follow the traditional model of the audience learning to appreciate the canon of great art. They don't offer any active role for listeners or viewers and they don't consider how arts experiences fit within people's lives. Starting from the viewer rather than the artist could lead to a whole new approach to visual art exhibitions in the same way that reader development offers a new engagement with books.

The traditional model of audience development in the arts is to attract more bums on seats, to increase the audience for professional performance. This offers the consumer a relatively passive role. The community arts movement sought to overturn this thinking in the1960s and 1970s, claiming that everyone is an artist, and rather than watch other people perform the art of the past, it was better to make your own. This led to some exciting projects but ultimately faced two flaws – not everyone wants to do it themselves, some people prefer to watch, and, sadly, not everyone has the talent either. This model is still very current in the writing world where a typical poetry reading can see 20 people in the audience, all of whom have come to read their own poems but none of whom is really interested in listening to the other 19.

Reader development offers a new concept of the audience as actively participating but making a different contribution from the writer, not imitating or usurping their role. It cuts through the old tired distinctions of highbrow and lowbrow, elitist and popular. It offers a way to achieve quality and access together by shifting attention to the quality of the reading experience rather than the quality of the book or the writer.

Reader development raises the status of reading as a creative activity. We need to keep articulating this as it is frequently forgotten in the glamorisation of the act of artistic creation. Put more crudely, reader development asserts that there may be more value in reading a great poem by someone else than in writing a poor one yourself.

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Reader development

First used by Rachel Van Riel in speeches in 1993. First printed use in article by Rachel Van Riel and Olive Fowler 'Why promote?' in Shelf Talk, Arts Council, 1996: 'Public libraries could be the national agency for reader development. Now that's an ambition to take us into the next century.'

Rachel invented the term reader development to describe the self-chosen process of wishing to develop your own reading, to get more out of reading and to use it for personal development. Opening the Book - finding a good read, published in 1996, is aimed at individual readers who want to do that. The book encourages readers to explore their own reading habits, preferences and responses in a way which is very different from formal and informal education programmes of literature appreciation, awareness or analysis. All those are fine good things (Rachel taught literature in universities and adult education for many years) and reader development did not seek to replace them. Rather it offered an alternative route, one which has been appreciated by tens of thousands of readers who don't wish to take up a study approach.

Opening the Book found that this approach sits very naturally and comfortably within the public library ethos. The public library is about self-development on your own terms, it offers a huge range of books without judgment on what's best, it meets the needs of a great variety of individual readers - all these make it the best home for reader development or reader-centred work. The change that Opening the Book brought was giving library staff skills and confidence to take initiatives to engage readers. Libraries have great traditions of service but, especially in adult services, this is mostly done in passive responsive way. If you make an enquiry, library staff will go to the ends of the earth to help you - but you have to ask first.

Reader development was consciously used instead of reading development to signal it is about the person not the skill. Reader development is something people can choose to do entirely by themselves. The phrase also made a deliberate connection to the term 'audience development' as used by arts practitioners. This enabled Opening the Book to make claims for the reading audience as an arts audience and for the role of public libraries in helping to grow that audience.

Reader development quickly moved from a term describing what people get out of reading to a term describing a body of professional practice within public libraries which actively engaged readers in new ways and offered them more. Some library staff disliked the term as they perceived the word 'development' in itself as patronising. Some thought it was going to be about encouraging people to read 'better' books. This was ironic as Opening the Book used the term to lead and teach an open, democratic approach to value judgments which is quite unique in the arts. Reader development is founded on the equality of importance between different readers and different reading preferences. Its definition of quality as the quality of the reading experience rather than the quality of the book is an inclusive, non-canonical one.

Reader development is the name for the professional practice and was never intended to be applied to the naming of reader events and promotions. Reader development is not a phrase you will ever see on a library poster - just as you won't see librarianship mentioned. You will see successful promotions with names like Open Ticket, Textual Intercourse, Aspirasian and Male Order - promotions which have been created using reader development principles to meet a wide range of reader needs and preferences.

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Reader-to-reader

First used by Olive Fowler of Opening the Book in 1996 as a generic term to describe all the activities Opening the Book suggested in training sessions to harness the power of readers promoting to each other. This included book chains, comments slips in books, readers' noticeboards, book swaps and, of course, the returns trolley.

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Reader-centred

First used by Rachel Van Riel in 1994 as a shorthand for putting the reader at the centre not the writer or the book. Reader-centred promotions start from reader needs and habits rather than writers, themes or genres.

In the early years, the term reader-centred did not have the same power to unlock funding as the term reader development, with its clear link to audience development. But as Opening the Book began to widen its focus from direct engagement with readers to ways of indirectly opening up reading choices - designing display furniture, influencing collections management, using observation of customers to plan spaces better - the term reader-centred became the key phrase to explain the unifying philosophy behind all of our work.

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Point of lend

First used by Jonathan Davidson of Book Communications in 1999 when Jonathan and Helen Thomas worked with Opening the Book and 6 Branching Out librarians to create Open Ticket, the first national reader-centred promotion for libraries. (See The Bookseller 24/31 December 1999.)

Point of lend is the equivalent of point of sale in a retail context. It means the graphic materials used to draw attention to a promotional offer and encourage customers to take it up. Open Ticket introduced libraries to retail concepts such as showcards, shelf-edge strips and belly bands as an alternative to printed booklists.

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Reader navigators/animateurs

First used by Grace Kempster while Head of Libraries, Information, Heritage and Cultural Services at Essex in 1998.

Animateur had been used in connection with other arts practice, especially dance, for many years but not associated with reading. The animateur makes the art form come alive through audience development, outreach and education. Similarly, navigator was starting to be used in web language to describe creating and managing web content for users but had not been used in connection with reading.

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Literature promotion

Literature can be promoted in many different ways – readings, workshops, book-signings, radio interviews, newspaper features, tv programmes, websites, prizes, competitions, festivals, bookshop and publisher promotions and many more. All of these are part of the literature infrastructure and all have some interaction with readers and reading. There are mainstream and fringe activities of different kinds, scale and quality. What they have in common is that usually the primary focus is on the writer or the book.

Literature promotion becomes reader development if the activity is promoting literature in a reader-centred way, starting from the viewpoint of the readers and putting the readers first, before the writers or the books. Some festivals, for example, are now including reader-centred activities.

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Literacy

Reader development assumes that people have the ability to read. Tackling literacy issues is a different area of expertise and a different area of funding in the UK. However, reader development approaches have been successfully used to complement basic skills' teaching.

Organisations such as the National Reading Campaign have a primary focus on adult literacy and children learning to read but embrace the wider reader development movement as well.

It helps for clarity to use the term 'reader development' to refer to the promotion of literature from the reader's point of view and the term 'reading development' to refer to the development of motor reading skills.

For more information see www.literacytrust.org.uk

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